Episode 47: August 1-8, 2021

August 1-7, 2021

Good afternoon, I’m Dennis Futoryan, and this is the 25th hour, helping you remember everything that happened beyond the 24/7 news cycle. Now, in this week’s news for the week of August 1-7, 2021, City residents will have to soon present proof of their vaccination in order to eat out, go to the gym or the movies, enjoy a play, and much more, an explosive report released by the State Attorney General substantiated sexual harassment claims from 11 women against Governor Cuomo, expediting calls for his resignation, impeachment, and removal; Despite half of the country being fully vaccinated and the unemployment rate dropping to 5.4%, President Biden urges caution as the Delta variant spreads and increases infections, and the Senate is nearing a vote on a physical infrastructure bill that could be one of Biden’s biggest legislative accomplishments. Now, onto the show; things may have changed by the time you hear this.

De Blasio

• COVID
  • The City decided to come out with a strong recommendation for New Yorkers to wear their mask indoors where there is high COVID spread, following a CDC recommendation for cities to implement such guidelines. 1200 cases per day have been reported since the Delta variant became the dominant strain appearing in new positive tests, six times the amount of cases per day since June. De Blasio said that he decided against a stronger mask mandate because he was afraid it would disincentivize New Yorkers from getting vaccinated. The City is also going to use case counts, hospitalizations, and the rate of vaccination to guide the City’s COVID policies instead of positive test counts. 
  • The Mayor also said that the City will only hire fully vaccinated workers in order to keep fighting against COVID. 
  • Later in the week, de Blasio instituted a new rule that requires people to show proof of their vaccination in order to visit restaurants, work out at gyms, go to plays, and dance in clubs, starting September 13th. The policy is starting on a volunteer basis on August 16th. When it came to the mandate that City healthcare workers get vaccinated or lose their jobs, the Mayor said that the plan worked, as the City saw a huge rise in shots being administered.
  • The Delta variant is the vast leader in new infections and cases, with data showing 83% of sampled positive cases containing the mutation. That makes NYC a high transmission area according to new CDC guidelines asking for people to mask up. 
• Cuomo:
  • De Blasio didn’t mince words when it came to a chance to comment on the Governor’s recent scandalous predicament, following the release of a long-awaited report by the State Attorney General Letitia James into Cuomo’s sexual assault scandals by 11 women. The Mayor called on Cuomo to resign, saying that he is at a point of no return, and that the Governor should face criminal charges for sexually harassing 11 women. 
• Mayoral elections:
  • Democratic mayoral nominee, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, called for the creation of a new gun violence task force following the shooting of 10 people in Queens, which the NYPD said is linked to gang violence. 
  • Mayor de Blasio finally started campaigning for Adams in person after the Mayor hid who he voted for in the primary; it was reported that de Blasio favored the Brooklyn Borough President and ranked him first. De Blasio showed up for a rally asking New Yorkers to vote for Adams against Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa in November. 
• Other elections:
  • The Queens judicial nominating convention convened this week, with judicial delegates usually politically chosen nominating judges to run on the County Democratic Party’s line for six open seats in the Queens Supreme Court. 
• Schools:
  • NYC schools still don’t know how they’re going to fit every student into their buildings, let alone classrooms, as COVID regulations are kicking back into place with the rise of the Delta variant.
  • The data and records of about 3k City public school students and 100 staff were shared more widely than intended, according to Chalkbeat, reporting that department officials disclosed that a Google Drive account held the data and was accessed by students. 
• Crime:
  • The Post reported that three retired NYPD executives, Internal Affairs boss Joseph Reznick, Deputy Commissioner of Labor Relations John Beirne and Deputy Commissioner for Employee Relations Robert Ganley, are earning their nearly $178k pensions on top of current civilian roles in the NYPD that are also pulling in six figures. NYPD spokesman John Miller defended the practice, saying the three men could have went into the private sector, but chose to keep serving the NYPD, and that their pensions are legit under law. 
  • Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez released 10k misconduct allegations and disciplinary findings against police officers, as are normally required to disclose to defense attorneys, following a Freedom of Information Law request from WNYC/Gothamist. The DA said the release was possible due to the repeal of 50a, a law that hid police disciplinary records.
  • According to a new report from the NYC Jail Oversight Board, after Thomas Earl Braunson III was arrested and placed in a Rikers intake cell, he was left there without pillows, blankets, or food for days, before dying in Corrections Department’s custody in April, one of three other inmates. The Corrections Department is still reviewing.
• Development:
  • The Mayor decided to take a different approach to the crumbling part of the BQE under the Brooklyn promenade, saying that the stretch of road will be repaired and reinforced, and taken down, as some City Council members wanted last year. 
  • The Meatpacking DIstrict won’t see cars anymore, as the Mayor made the temporary Open Streets policy during the pandemic in the neighborhood permanent. 
• Unions:
  • The City struck a tentative deal with the FDNY and EMS workers union to give firefighters and medical workers a pay bump.

City council

• Pay equity:
  • The City Council found through an internal investigation that male city workers earn a median salary $21,600 higher than their female peers and that white City workers earn a median salary of $27,800 more than their black peers.

Cuomo

• COVID
  • As case numbers increase from the Delta variant and municipalities are reinstating mask mandates, Governor Cuomo started also implementing statewide worker vaccination mandates. He announced at the start of the week that MTA and Port Authority employees have until Labor Day to be fully vaccinated or otherwise report to weekly testing. 
  • Although the President eked out another eviction moratorium through October 3rd for places in the country with high transmission of COVID, state tenants had more time as the state’s moratorium lasts until the end of the month, and they should be getting rent relief by now. 
  • The state has run out of money in its unemployment insurance coffers, borrowing $10b from the federal Department of Labor to continue paying out unemployment claims. 
  • The state’s officials said that school districts are left to their own devices in crafting their reopening plans for their fall semesters, angering school administrators that were waiting for guidance on the state on questions such as masking, social distancing, and vaccination requirements.
• Scandals:
  • In a bombshell new report dropped by the Attorney General Letitia James’ office, it was found that Cuomo did, in fact, sexually harass 11 different women, including current and former staffers, and even a female state trooper who he asked whether she can find a woman for him that can handle pain, waiving a state requirement that would have forced the trooper to rotate into a different assignment. The 165 page report found that Governor Cuomo fostered a toxic work culture, and his sexual harassment violated both federal and state laws, although the report is a civil one, and not a criminal one. James said that prosecutors are free to do what they want with the report, and soon enough, the DAs of Albany, Westchester, Nassau, and Manhattan all said their offices are investigating Cuomo, as one of the women accusing Cuomo filed the first criminal complaint against the Governor since the scandals came to light. Politicians around the state quickly asked for Cuomo to resign, including Cuomo’s own Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul, who called the behavior exhibited in the report repulsive and unlawful. President Biden coldly answered “yes” to a reporter’s question about whether Cuomo should leave office. Carl Heastie, the Speaker of the Assembly, called on the impeachment committee to wrap up its work quickly, as Democrats in the chamber held an 11th-hour meeting. It could take up to a month for the committee to formally conclude their investigation. The Chairman of the State Democratic Party, Jay Jacobs, who was one of Cuomo’s staunchest advocates, said that the Governor has lost his ability to govern. 
  • The Governor denied the report’s findings, and refused to step down. He said that he does kiss and hug people, but that he never did anything inappropriate and that when it came to his office, the work and environment makes things naturally difficult and fast-paced, but not toxic. As for the report itself, Cuomo said that Letitia James and her attorneys are biased because James can either run herself for Governor and because one of her independently hired lawyers investigated Cuomo before. More revelations from the report included detailing how one of Cuomo’s former chief special counsels for ethics, Laura Edidin, resigned last March due to Cuomo’s sexual assault allegations. 
  • Cuomo’s lawyers, including his chief counsel against the sexual assault scandals, Rita Glavin, held an impromptu virtual press conference that started off rocky with some technical glitches, but went on to say that the report was made up of biased investigators and that the facts were wrong, including that Cuomo and his team were “ambushed” by James’ report. The Assembly impeachment committee demanded Cuomo present the committee with more evidence in the coming days. The legislature’s impeachment process is similar to Congress’, with some key differences, as City & State Senior State Politics Reporter Zach Williams pointed out in our recent discussion. The Assembly votes to send impeachment articles to the State Senate by a simple majority vote of the 150-person chamber, in which then the 7 judges of the Court of Appeals to hear a case presented by both sides’ lawyers, with all of the state Senate serving as jury (except the Majority Leader, who would become Lt. Governor by order of succession and thus has to recuse themselves). Only one Governor in New York history has been impeached and removed.
  • Cuomo is also facing federal investigations related to his alleged coverup of nursing home death data to shed the state’s COVID death toll in a more positive light, and James’ office is still looking into Cuomo’s COVID book written as the state was still suffering through the virus. 
  • Meanwhile, taxpayers continue to pay Cuomo’s exorbitant legal fees, going to attorneys Walden Macht and Morvillo Abramowitz at $2.5m each.
  • 59% of New York adults say Cuomo should resign according to a new poll from Marist, although the share among Democrats is a little over 52%. Only 32% say Cuomo should serve out the rest of his term. A separate poll from Quinnipiac found that voters want Cuomo to resign by a 70-25% margin.
• Nassau County:
  • A week after news reports published that a law was proposed by Nassau County legislatures to place police officers as a protected class under human rights discrimination laws, the legislature in fact adopted the bill this week, which would allow the county attorney to file suit on behalf of first responders alleging discrimination. Nassau County Executive Laura Curran asked State Attorney General Letitia James to weigh in on the bill.
• Albany:
  • Albany mayor Kathy Sheehan signed three bills into law this week, including a “good cause” eviction bill that would force landlords to cite one of ten legal prerequisites before evicting a tenant.

State legislature

• Solitary confinement:
  • 70 state lawmakers signed a letter decrying New York City’s bid to end solitary confinement, calling it by another name instead, after the state passed the HALT Act, which ends long-term solitary confinement in prisons, and makes it no longer than 15 days. The Corrections Department is moving prisoners to cells with separately attached outdoor areas, with state officials saying that goes around the HALT Act, letting prisons keep inmates sequestered for longer, with de Blasio saying the City is doing more than any other jail system in America to end solitary confinement. 
• Eviction ban:
  • State Senators Alessandra Biaggi and Assembly Member Yuh-Line Niou are calling on their fellow lawmakers to extend a state eviction moratorium that is set to expire at the end of the month. 

State judiciary

• Steve Levy:
  • Former Suffolk County, Long Island, Executive Steve Levy is still trying to prevent the release of a non prosecution agreement between himself and the former Suffolk County DA, as his legal team filed legal papers against news organization Newsday. Levy agreed to resign his position in exchange for not being prosecuted for campaign violations. A trial judge has already ruled to release the papers, with the decision now resting with a state Appellate Division court. 
• Diaphragm law:
  • Following a trial judge’s decision to strike down a portion of a City Council bill aimed at prohibiting police chokeholds, specifically the so-called diaphragm law, because of vague language, the City said it is appealing the decision after all. The Mayor originally said he would have Law Department lawyers look into how to change the legislative language. The police unions that sued against the law in the first place said they don’t believe the City’s appeal has merit. 
• Manhattan Detention Complex:
  • Federal judge William Kuntz II ordered prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office from the Eastern District and Federal Defenders to both tour the Manhattan Detention Complex in the next 30 days, a jail notorious for its poor conditions, amidst reports of medical neglect against inmates. 
• School disability rights:
  • A federal judge has approved a settlement between the City Department of Education and disability rights advocates that would see the Education Department change how it provides legally-mandated “related services” to disabled students, including occupational therapy and mental health counseling. The class action lawsuit from 2017 revolved around the inadequacy of vouchers spread by the Department for disabled students to get related services if their school doesn’t have any staff to provide them.
• Homelessness:
  • The human ping-pong game continues related to the City’s policy to move back single homeless men from hotels to congregate shelters as the Delta variant spreads. Federal judge Valerie Caproni initially paused the plan, citing the failure of the City to give disabled homeless residents notice and reasonable accommodations according to their disability to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Despite not being fully in compliance with the court order, the City restarted moving people, leading to the judge to pause the move again, citing legal arguments by the Legal Aid Society which, in one case, had the City move disabled residents into a hotel without an elevator. 

Biden

• Domestic
  • COVID
    • In response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s demand for the CDC to extend their eviction moratorium following its expiration last Saturday, the White House insisted that it didn’t have the legal authority to extend it even by an extra month. Millions of tenants are facing eviction proceedings ever since the ban expired. Enough outcry, including Democrat Cory Bush sleeping on the Capitol steps in protest, eventually led to Biden issuing a more narrowly targeted eviction moratorium, specifically in regions that have high transmissions of COVID, until October 3rd. The President said he wasn’t sure of the narrower moratorium’s legality due to the Supreme Court essentially striking down the last one, but it’ll give tenants time. Sure enough, landlords and real estate companies already filed suit against the moratorium in Washington state.
    • Biden railed against Republican governors who are prohibiting mask mandates, telling them to get out of the way of schools and businesses who are putting mandates in place. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came out with a speech for Biden to essentially mind his business and take care of the border first before criticizing how states are handling the Delta variant, in which Biden responded with “Governor who?” when asked by a reporter about DeSantis' remarks. DeSantis signed an order this week prohibiting local counties from putting in place school mask mandates, but it isn’t deterring several school districts from defying the Florida Governor, including Leon, Broward, and Alachua Counties.
    • The FDA is now set on fully approving the Pfizer vaccine by September, people familiar with the plan told the New York Times. Currently, vaccines are only greenlighted under emergency approval, which gives them a speedier process in distribution and the ability to run trials at different levels concurrently. 
    • The President is reportedly planning on a virtual COVID summit to be held at the next UN General Assembly in September. The summit would discuss distributing more international resources to combat the COVID pandemic. The White House said that the US has donated 110m COVID vaccine doses, more than the EU and China, but the WHO says 11b doses are needed to catch poorer countries up to richer countries for inoculation.
    • It might be a month late, but it's a milestone nonetheless. The White House announced that it finally got 70% of the US population inoculated with at least one dose of the vaccines, originally meant for July 4th. 50% of the total US population is now fully vaccinated. Unfortunately, the rise of the Delta variant and skyrocketing hospitalizations underscore a new sense of urgency to get the population fully vaccinated.
    • The WHO came out with a statement requesting a one-month moratorium on the use of booster shots at this stage in the pandemic as poor countries haven’t even received their first shipments of vaccines yet to vaccinate their populations. Here in the US, the FDA and CDC are cool on the idea of booster shots, except for the immunocompromised, but generally agree that it’s too soon to start spreading booster shots, as Press Secretary Jen Psaki elaborated on this week. Meanwhile, Modernas said that a booster shot for their vaccine regimen is likely needed before winter, as the company announced 93% efficacy against COVID 6 months after the second dose.
    • The White House is working on a policy that would require foreign travelers to be vaccinated once restrictions from the pandemic are lifted.
    • Following the release of a policy mandating that federal workers either get vaccinated or test possibly even twice weekly against the virus, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is reportedly thinking about asking for Congressional authorization to mandate vaccines on active-duty troops. 
    • The economy added 943k jobs last month according to the Commerce Department, showing one of the best hiring numbers during the pandemic, along with a drop in the unemployment rate to 5.4%. The President gave a speech after the release of the numbers cautioning Americans not to let their guards down because of the Delta variant, as the growth in the economy could come tumbling down if more people get sick and die. The jobs report was a welcome one, after data from the ADP Research Institute showed a paltry 330k payroll increase in July. Jobless claims dropped by 14k for a total of 385k last week.
    • NBC reported that the Trump-appointed Homeland Security Department Inspector General Joseph Cuffari is set to release a report blaming FEMA, and not a COVID task force led by former Vice President Mike Pence, for confusion over PPE distribution in the early days of the pandemic. Cuffari said FEMA’s data management system wasn’t transparent about how the agency allocated resources to states, and that was the problem, despite reports that Mike Pence and Jared Kushner overrode the decision-making by FEMA over where ventilators, PPE, and government contracts would go.
    • A moratorium on federal student debt collection has been extended to January 31st.
  • Amazon union vote:
    • The National Labor Relations Board came out with an official recommendation for the recent vote for Amazon workers to unionize to be redone, citing alleged violations to labor laws, including meddling in the election. Union advocates have pointed to Amazon practices such as hanging anti-union posters in the bathroom and changing a traffic light to prevent union supporters from courting warehouse employees. Amazon contends they did nothing wrong and will appeal the NLRBs ruling. 
  • Immigration:
    • A week after leaving other Trump-era immigration rules making it easier to deport immigrants because of COVID, Biden is also leaving a rule that will turn away asylum seekers at the border. The CDC confirmed that the rule will stay in place after the White House had earlier said it was trying to get rid of the rule.
    • The Dept of Health and Human Services Inspector General’s office has opened an investigation into the treatment of child migrants at a facility in Fort Bliss, Texas. Attorneys and advocates have alleged that the facility warehoused children that felt like they were in a prison, with the facility already overcrowded coupled with poor case management. 
    • Biden said that his administration will begin offering vaccines to migrants detained in US custody at the border along Mexico, as Customs officials struggle with COVID infections throughout migrant facilities. 
  • Crypto:
    • Securities and Exchange Commissioner Gary Gensler said this week that cryptocurrency investment needs investor protection, likening it to a wild west. Gensler made a call on Congress to give his agency more authority to regulate the crypto market. Taxing crypto sales is a big point of contention in the current negotiations for the infrastructure proposal in the Senate.
  • Energy:
    • The Biden administration announced that electric vehicle sales should be half of all vehicle sales by 2030, the basis of a new order the President plans to sign. Federal agencies are set to enact stricter standards on the vehicles they purchase for agency business.
    • The President also restored Obama-era mileage standards that were reversed by Trump which would establish new rules for 2023 cars cutting emissions by a third and save 200b gallons of gas over the life of the cars.
  • Trump:
    • Just a week after the Justice Department cleared the way for Trump’s tax returns to be delivered to the House Ways and Means Committee investigating his alleged tax fraud, Trump’s lawyer said that he plans to fight their release. Trump’s lawyers petitioned a federal judge this week not to just block the release of the tax returns, but to also order the end of all Congressional investigations into the former President. 
  • DOJ:
    • The Justice Department announced an investigation into the Phoenix, Arizona, police department and their policing practices, including their use of excessive force and discriminatory/retaliatory conduct. The investigation joins probes into the police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville.
  • Nominations:
    • The President nominated the first openly gay woman to serve on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Beth Robinson, an associate justice on the Vermont Supreme Court since 2011.
  • 9/11 families:
    • It was reported this week that about 1800 family members of 9/11 victims are set to release a statement calling on Biden not to show up at memorial events on the eve of the attack’s 20th anniversary unless the President releases data on links between Saudi Arabian officials and the attacks. The statement said that the 9/11 Commission in 2004 shed light on complicity on the part of Saudi Arabian leaders, and the US hasn’t held them accountable. Families of 9/11 victims have filed a federal lawsuit against Saudi Arabian officials last year.
• Foreign
  • Afghanistan:
    • The State Department said that thousands more Afghan refugees can be resettled in the US as they wait for their visa applications to be processed. Two hundred interpreters and their families have already arrived at a Fort in Virginia, with the program expanding to include Afghan workers at NGOs that assisted in the US war effort.
    • Meanwhile, the Taliban’s advance throughout the country as the US withdraws is only getting worse, as an attempt on the Afghan Defense Minister’s life went down this week, and an assassination was successful against Dawa Khan Menapal, Afghanistan’s top media official.
  • Iraq:
    • 17k artifacts are in the process of returning to their historic places in Iraq from the US, after relics were looted following the Gulf War.
  • Iran:
    • The US military said that an Iranian drone attacked an Israeli company-owned oil tanker off the coast of Oman, killing two crew members. Israel and Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah have been engaged in tit-for-tat rocket and artillery strikes this week. 
  • Indonesia:
    • The US and Indonesia have begun what’s called a strategic dialogue in order to strengthen the two countries’ ties, another plank in the US’ plan to coalesce allies around China and pressure the Communist country.
  • Taiwan:
    • In that vein, the Biden administration has approved its first arms sale to Taiwan, a claimed island nation off of China that used to be home to the Dalai Lama before he was exiled to India. Taiwan is governed by its own government and claims independence from China, but China doesn’t recognize those claims, with the threat of China invading the island always looming in the air. The arms sale went for $750m.
  • Hong Kong:
    • And as it relates to Hong Kong, the former independent city sitting on the Eastern coast of China that was once controlled by Britain before being turned back over to China under the condition that democratic policies were safeguarded, the President signed an executive order allowing some residents from Hong Kong to remain in the US as they’re afraid of being persecuted back home. China inch-by-inch chipped away at Hong Kong’s democratic rules and norms before taking it over completely in the past few years, arresting dissidents and controlling its government. 

Congress

• House
  • Financial disclosures:
    • Members of Congress just can’t seem to find out how to properly disclose their stock holdings on time. Democratic Representatives Lori Trahan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Kathy Castor failed to file their financial trades on time, ranging from weeks to months late. They might face fines of $200. The Campaign Legal Center filed complaints against three Republican members of Congress last week, alleging Senator Tommy Tuberville, Rep. Pat Fallon, and Rep. Blake Moore also didn’t disclose their stock purchases.
  • COVID:
    • GOP Congress members plan to sue House Speaker Pelosi for House mask mandates, but soon after the reporting for that, one of the Congressmen, Ralph Norman, tested positive for COVID. Norman joined Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie to file suit against Pelosi last week.
• Senate
  • Infrastructure:
    • The chamber continued its last-minute work on the bipartisan physical infrastructure proposal that can see Biden achieving his first legislative accomplishment since the American Rescue Plan at the beginning of his term. Majority Leader Schumer moved ahead to file cloture, or end debate, on the bill, moving onto the amendments stage on the floor, which could take a while as Republicans introduce so-called poison pill amendments to taint the bill, which aren’t likely to succeed. Meanwhile, Minority Leader McConnell warned Democrats not to place measures in a separate $3.5t human infrastructure proposal to increase the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling refers to how much money the US can borrow to continue funding itself and its various programs. Schumer doesn’t seem deterred, as the human infrastructure proposal will most likely pass under budget reconciliation rules, necessitating just a simple majority vote from the chamber, and the debt ceiling is coming due in October. 
    • The Congressional Budget Office score of the physical infrastructure bill, which was what many lawmakers waited for before agreeing to cut off debate on the bill, said that the bill would raise the federal deficit by almost $256b over 10 years, adding $415b to discretionary spending over that time, increasing revenues by $50b and cutting spending by $110b. The score led to Republican Bill Hagerty to say that he couldn’t support the bill in good conscience anymore, throwing the whole thing into disarray.
  • COVID:
    • Republican Senator Lindsay Graham reported at the start of the week that he tested positive for COVID despite being fully vaccinated. At least 96 of the 100 Senators are vaccinated, leading to the chamber to scramble to find out who else could be infected.
  • Jan 6:
    • The Senate chamber unanimously approved giving the Congressional Gold Medal to the Capitol Police and other officers who defended the Capitol on January 6th. The Gold Medal is the highest civilian honor. 
  • Nominations:
    • A Senate committee has advanced the nominations of Rob Santos to become Biden’s new head of the Census, 10-3. Meanwhile, Republicans on the committee unanimously opposed the nomination of Sheriff Ed Gonzalez to lead ICE, grasping on his anti-Trump statements, forcing Gonzalez to advance on a party-line vote. 

Federal judiciary

• SCOTUS
  • Rejection of challenge to COVID restrictions:
    • Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer declined to refer a case from Maine where a church challenged the state’s COVID restrictions. The Calvary Chapel argued that the Delta variant was being used as a threat to place more religious restrictions onto the church. 
• Mexico v. gun manufacturers:
  • Mexico is planning to file suit against US gun manufacturers in Boston federal court in the coming days, claiming that US based gun manufacturers knew or should have known about the illegal loose flow of weapons over the Mexican border, fueling cartels that are taking over the country. The lawsuit is expected to ask for compensation, and isn’t setting its sights on the US as a defendant. 
• Texas immigration order:
  • A week after the DOJ filed suit against Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s executive order to ban the transportation of migrants around the state, blaming on the need for the order on COVID, El Paso federal judge Kathleen Cardone granted Merrick Garland’s temporary restraining order against the order going into effect, saying the DOJ was likely to prevail in its arguments that the order is unconstitutional as a usurpation of the federal government’s immigration powers. Separately, Abbott called for another special session of the legislature so that Republicans get another bite at the apple to pass restrictive voting measures that caused Democrats to flee the state in the first place to avoid a quorum.
• Trump lies:
  • US magistrate judge N. Reid Nureiter from Colorado sanctioned two lawyers this week over their false claims of election fraud, propagating statements from former President Trump that the 2020 election was rigged against him. Lawyers Ernest Walker and Gary Fielder had their lawsuit against Colorado officials dismissed, with the judge saying the suit is what violent insurrections are made of.

National

• COVID
  • Florida has become one of the epicenters of the COVID rise in the US, with the Sunshine State breaking its record for hospitalizations days in a row. Florida represents about 1 in 5 new cases nationally. 15 states are keeping data about their breakthrough cases secret, with 35 states releasing just some data. The US is averaging 100k COVID cases a day, not seeing numbers like that since the last winter’s peak. 
  • Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said that he regrets banning mask mandates throughout the state, pointing to an increase in cases within Arkansas.
  • More businesses are taking the initiative to require their employees to be vaccinated as a condition of employment, with giants such as Amazon, Google, and Tyson Foods putting the policy in place. Tyson is giving their workers a deadline of November 1st, offering employees a $200 bonus as an incentive. 
  • Former President Obama wasn’t immune from criticism, especially from the right. The New York Post and Fox News hounded Obama for planning a 60th birthday bash with hundreds of people invited despite the spread of the Delta variant. Obama reportedly scaled back the affair, with his spokeswoman Hannah Hankins, saying it’ll now only include close friends and family. 
  • The world’s known number of COVID cases has surpassed 200m after a little more than a year and a half after the pandemic started. 
• Wildfires:
  • Historic and devastating wildfires continue to blaze throughout the Western US. The Dixie Fire in Northern California has forced more evacuations as the blaze grew to explosive proportions, burning more than 432k acres. The fire destroyed a historic gold rush town, Greenville, later in the week, reducing 75% of the town to ashes. 
• Olympics
  • Simone Biles has gone back to competing in the Olympics, having announced she was going to participate in the balance beams finals, which she won bronze in. The legendary gymnast had pulled out of competitions earlier due to mental health concerns.
  • Here are some more American gold victories:
    • Jade Carey took the gold in the gymnastics floor exercises.
    • Sydney McLaughlin set a record and won the gold in the women’s 400-meter hurdles.
    • Ryan Crouser set a record to win his second consecutive shot put gold medal.
    • David Taylor won the gold in the 86kg freestyle wrestling competition against Iran, 4-3, and Katie Nageotte took the gold in the pole vault after clearing a little more than 16 feet in the air.
    • April Ross and Alix Klineman took the gold medal in women’s beach volleyball as a duo, beating Australia’s Mariage Artcacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy.
    • US heavyweight freestyle wrestler Gable Stevenson pulled off a remarkable win against Georgia’s wrestler, beating him 9-8 in the final seconds of the match to take home the gold. 
    • The US women’s water polo team beat Spain 14-5 to get the team’s third straight Gold medal.
    • The US men’s basketball team beat France 87-82, winning its 16th gold medal. Kevin Durant led the team with 29 points. 
  • And some that came up short but we’re proud of them nonetheless!
    • The US Women’s Soccer team barely lost to Canada, 1-0. The team took the bronze medal after beating Australia 4-3. 
    • Allyson Felix took home the bronze medal in 400-meter final, matching Carl Lewis as the most decorated track and field runner, and becoming the most decorated female runner in the sport. Felix later took home her 11th Olympic medal after coming out on top of 4x400 meter relay.
    • The US baseball team took home the silver medal in baseball after being beat by Japan 2-0.
• NCAA:
  • A new report by law firm Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLC hired by the NCAA to look into the Association’s own treatment of the two different male and female collect basketball teams, finding that the NCAA underinvested in the female basketball tournament by about a hundred million dollars as it held the men’s basketball tournaments on a pedestal. If the NCAA wants to achieve more regarding gender equity, the 118 page report said, then the organization needs to enact equity policies that the NCAA undervalued its own women’s bask to stop dumping all of its time, money, and attention into the male basketball tourneys. 
• McCloskeys:
  • Mike Parson, the Governor of Missouri, pardoned Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the husband and wife who brandished a rifle and a pistol at Black Lives Matter protesters as they walked through their gated community last year. The McCloskeys originally pleaded guilty to misdemeanors for throwing their guns around and agreed to forfeit them, but now their records will be clean with the pardon.
• Jan 6 officer suicides:
  • Two more police officers that responded to the January 6th insurrection of Trump supporters against Biden’s Electoral College certification have killed themselves. Metropolitan Police officers Gunther Hashida and Kyle DeFreytag now bring the number to four officers that took their lives since Trump’s incitement of violence against the Capitol.  
  • Two Capitol insurrection rioters, Scott Fairlamb and Devlyn Thompson, became the first to plead guilty for assaulting officers at the insurrection. Both men face 3-5 years in prison.
• Ohio special election:
  • In Ohio, a special election that was being seen as a microcosm for the future direction of the Democratic Party didn’t end well for those who were hoping for Nina Turner to win the 11th District Congressional primary to replace Biden’s new HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge. Turner, seen as an aggressive progressive that went after Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden alike despite being chair of a group supporting Sanders for President in 2020, lost to Shontel Brown, the more establishment candidate, blaming evil money for her election loss. Brown’s campaign, backed by the Congressional Black Caucus, seized on Turner’s past statements attacking Biden and Hillary Clinton in the past to come up from behind. 
• Trumka dies:
  • The head of the powerful labor union AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, unexpectedly died this week at the age of 72. Trumka’s death shook the liberal establishment as he was a close ally, with Senate Majority Leader Schumer giving a speech remembering the man. The AFL-CIO represents 12m workers.

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